TURKEY: THE PKK AND A KURDISH SETTLEMENT Europe Report N°219 – 11 September 2012

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Europe Report N°219 – 11 September 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ... i

I. INTRODUCTION ... 1

II. MEANS OR END? THE PKK’S ARMED STRUGGLE ... 7

A. THE ORGANISATION ... 7

B. THE LEADERSHIP ... 9

C. COMPETING LEADERSHIP FACTIONS ... 11

D. THE INSURGENT FORCES ... 12

E. FINANCING ... 13

F. IDEOLOGY ... 13

III. THE PKK OUTSIDE TURKEY ... 15

A. THE PKK IN THE MIDDLE EAST ... 15

B. SYRIA ... 15

C. IRAQ AND IRAN ... 17

D. THE DIASPORA ... 18

IV. THE BDP: A POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE? ... 20

A. AN UPHILL STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION ... 20

B. THE COMPETITION FOR THE KURDISH VOTE ... 20

C. THE CURSE OF THE TERRORIST LABEL ... 21

D. THE BDP’S DILEMMAS ... 24

E. YOUTH RADICALISATION ... 25

V. KURDISH GRIEVANCES AND DEMANDS ... 26

A. FULL LANGUAGE RIGHTS FOR KURDISH ... 27

B. AN END TO DISCRIMINATION IN THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS ... 28

C. GREATER SELF-GOVERNMENT,NOT INDEPENDENCE ... 29

D. POLITICAL REPRESENTATION ... 30

E. DEMOBILISATION FOR INSURGENTS,SECURITY FOR VILLAGERS ... 30

VI. A TWO-STAGE PROCESS ... 32

A. THE PRIME MINISTER’S CRUCIAL ROLE ... 32

B. SEPARATING THE PKKPROBLEM FROM THE KURDISH PROBLEM ... 33

C. NEGOTIATE DEMOBILISATION AFTER REFORMS ARE COMPLETE ... 34

VII.CONCLUSION ... 36

APPENDICES A. MAP OF TURKEY ... 37

B. GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS... ... 38

C. ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP ... 39

D. CRISIS GROUP REPORTS AND BRIEFINGS ON EUROPE SINCE 2009 ... 40

E. CRISIS GROUP BOARD OF TRUSTEES ... 41

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Europe Report N°219 11 September 2012

TURKEY: THE PKK AND A KURDISH SETTLEMENT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Turkey’s Kurdish conflict is becoming more violent, with more than 700 dead in fourteen months, the highest casualties in thirteen years. Prolonged clashes with militants in the south east, kidnappings and attacks on civilians suggest hardliners are gaining the upper hand in the insurgent PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). The government and mainstream media should resist the impulse to call for all- out anti-terrorist war and focus instead, together with Kurds, on long-term conflict resolution. There is need to reform oppressive laws that jail legitimate Kurdish politicians and make amends for security forces’ excess. The Kurdish movement, including PKK leaders, must abjure terrorist attacks and publicly commit to realistic political goals. Above all, politicians on all sides must legalise the rights most of Tur- key’s Kurds seek, including mother-language education;

an end to discriminatory laws; fair political representation;

and more decentralisation. Turkey’s Kurds would then have full equality and rights, support for PKK violence would drop, and the government would be better placed to negotiate insurgent disarmament and demobilisation.

The government has zigzagged in its commitment to Kurds’

rights. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) initiated a “Democratic Opening” in 2005, but its commitment faltered in 2009. At times, AKP leaders give positive signals, including scheduling optional Kurdish lessons in school and agreeing to collaborate in parliament with other parties on more reforms. At others, they appear in- tent on crushing the PKK militarily, minimise the true extent of fighting, fail to sympathise with Kurdish civilian casualties, openly show their deep distrust of the Kurdish movement, do nothing to stop the arrest of thousands of non-violent activists and generally remain complacent as international partners mute their criticism at a time of Middle East turmoil.

Contradictory signals have also come from the Kurdish movement, including leaders of legal factions and the PKK, which is condemned in Turkey and many other countries as a terrorist organisation. They have made conciliatory statements, tried to stick to legal avenues of association and protest in the European diaspora and repeatedly called for a mutual truce. At the same time, few have disavowed the suicide bombings, car bombs, attacks on civilians and kidnappings that have increased in 2012. Hardliners pro-

mote the armed struggle, radical youth defy more moderate leaders, and hundreds of young men and women volun- teer to join the insurgency. European and U.S. counter- terrorism officials still accuse the PKK of extortion and drug dealing. Mixed messages have convinced mainstream public opinion that Turkey’s Kurds seek an independent state, even though most just want full rights within Turkey.

The Kurdish movement needs to speak with one voice and honour its leaders’ commitments, if it is to be taken seri- ously in Ankara and its grievances are to be heard sympa- thetically by the rest of the country.

Finding the way to a settlement is hard, as terrorist attacks continue and the PKK mounts increasingly lengthy offensives. Turmoil in neighbouring Syria, where a PKK-affil- iated group has taken control of at least one major Kurdish area near the border with Turkey, worries Ankara and may be inflating the insurgents’ sense of power. Some on both sides are talking again of winning militarily and seem to have accepted many hundreds of dead each year as the cost, even though after nearly three decades of in- conclusive fighting, public opinion among Turks and Kurds alike increasingly concedes that military action alone will not solve their mutual problem.

What has been missing is a clear conflict resolution strategy, implemented in parallel with measured security efforts to combat armed militants, to convince Turkey’s Kurds that their rights will be gradually but convincingly extended in a democratising Turkey. Now is a good time for this to change. An election (presidential) is not expected for two years. A new constitution is being drafted. The AKP has a secure parliamentary majority. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should seize the opportunity to champion democratic reforms that would meet many of the demands voiced by most of Turkey’s Kurds. This would not require negotiations with the PKK, but the prime minister should engage with the legal Kurdish movement, take its grievances into account and make it feel owner- ship over reforms.

Major misapprehensions exist on the question of what the Kurdish movement is and what it wants. The actions rec- ommended below would move the conflict closer to resolution than military operations alone.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

To establish an environment for progress To the Turkish government and the leaders of the Kurdish movement:

1. Work toward a ceasefire, urge insurgents to stop attacks, avoid large-scale military operations, including aerial bombings, and stand up to pressure for ever- stronger armed responses.

2. Urge the PKK to rein in factions that attack and kidnap civilians, plant bombs and trash property or throw Molotov cocktails in demonstrations, and to pledge not to use a ceasefire to rearm, resupply or relocate.

The security forces must limit aggressive crowd control methods, including tear or pepper gas, to an ab- solute minimum.

Even in the absence of a ceasefire

3. Address the legitimate, broad demands of Kurdish society for mother-language education, the lowering of national election thresholds, more decentralised local government and removal of discriminatory ethnic bias in the constitution and laws.

4. Change the Anti-Terror Law, Penal Code and other legislation to end the practices of indefinite pre-trial detention and prosecution of thousands of peaceful Kurdish movement activists as “terrorists”, and en- sure that non-violent discussion of Kurdish issues is not punished by law.

5. Help inform public opinion about the international legitimacy of multi-lingualism in education, ethnic diversity and wider powers for local government.

6. Use the parliament and, in particular, its constitutional reform commission to facilitate discussion between political parties on reform and assure wide buy-in.

7. Make public a package of measures for reintegration and retraining of former Kurdish insurgents, once the time comes to agree on full demobilisation.

To leaders of the Kurdish movement:

8. Clarify what reforms Kurds want in language, education and public life; codify ideas for decentralisation or devolution; identify precisely which laws and constitutional articles should be changed; commit to these reforms, advocate for them in parliament and make a determined effort to explain them to mainstream Turkish opinion.

9. Stop demanding a “self-defence militia” in Kurdish- speaking areas, end any kind of illegal political organisation in Turkey that could be construed as a parallel state and remain committed to ending the fighting and disbanding insurgent units.

To Turkey’s allies and friends, notably the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland and Spain:

10. Engage with the Turkish government and opinion leaders to share experiences of defusing ethnic, linguistic, and regional tensions, including through travel pro- grams for officials, politicians and opinion-makers from all relevant sides and parties in Turkey.

11. Continue to encourage Turkey to abide by its international commitments to protection of minority rights, freedom of expression and access to a fair trial without extended periods of pre-trial detention.

Istanbul/Brussels, 11 September 2012

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Europe Report N°219 11 September 2012

TURKEY: THE PKK AND A KURDISH SETTLEMENT

I. INTRODUCTION

Since large-scale hostilities with the PKK resumed in summer 2011, Turkey has experienced the worst fighting since it captured and jailed the insurgency’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999.¹ According to an informal minimum tally of official statistics maintained by Crisis Group since the 12 June 2011 parliamentary elections, 711 people had been killed by mid-August 2012, including 222 soldiers, police and village guard militia, 405 PKK fighters and 84 civilians. This is four times more deaths than in 2009 and far more than the annual figures in 2000-2004, when the PKK was implementing a unilateral ceasefire.² Hopes have been dashed of ending a conflict that has already cost the economy $300 billion-$450 billion³ and killed 30,000- 40,000 people since 1984.⁴ Serious tensions have returned to the south east, reversing a decade-long trend toward more normal daily life. In July, for example, Hakkari’s four- year-old university stopped night classes because students commuting from rural areas were too fearful to attend.

The PKK has long used terrorist methods as part of its ar- senal in an attempt to force the government to take it se- riously and become the dominant element of the Kurdish movement.⁵ Over the past year PKK groups apparently

1For previous reporting on the Kurdish movement in Turkey and related matters, see Crisis Group Europe Report N°213 Turkey:

Ending the PKK Insurgency, 20 September 2011, and Crisis Group Middle East Report N°81, Turkey and Iraqi Kurds: Con- flict or Cooperation?, 13 November 2008.

262 members of the security forces, 65 PKK and eighteen civilians died in 2009. Yalçın Akdoğan, AKP deputy and Erdoğan adviser on the Kurdish question, İnsanı yaşat ki devlet yaşasın:

demokratik açılım sürecinde yaşananlar [Improving People’s Lives so the State Can Live: experiences in the Democratic Opening], (Istanbul, 2010), p. 18.

3The lower figure is from Prime Minister Erdoğan, cited in

“The Democratic Initiative Process”, AKP, Ankara, February 2010. The higher is from Yalçın Akdoğan, op. cit., p. 15.

4See Crisis Group Report, Turkey: Ending the PKK Insurgency, op. cit., fn. 2.

5Mazhar Bağlı, a Kurdish member of AKP Central Executive Committee, said the extent of bloodshed was partly a cultural problem. “I regret to say this, but shedding Kurds’ blood is cheap for the Kurds. The worst blood feuds are internal, in the family, not between villages. If you are Kurdish, and speak Kurdish

kidnapped at least 50 people, most of them later released:

a parliamentarian, businessmen, health workers, teachers, village guards, AKP officials and construction workers.⁶ In August 2011, an explosive device on a tourist beach in Kemer near Antalya injured ten, mostly foreigners – the PKK did not claim responsibility, but one of its offshoots has targeted tourists in the past. A suicide car bomb attack claimed by the PKK on a police station in Kayseri province, far from any fighting, killed a policeman and two attackers and wounded seventeen in May 2012.⁷ At least eleven other terrorist attacks killed 26 civilians.⁸ The most deadly was on 20 August 2012, when a remote- ly-controlled car bomb exploded near a police station in Gaziantep province on the Syrian border, killing a policeman and eight civilians, including four children, and wound- ing over 60. The PKK denied responsibility, but this did not convince the public, media or the government.⁹

and are not with the organisation, there are going to be threats, threats to our life”. Crisis Group interview, Istanbul, May 2012.

6Most are released after several days, but a number of soldiers, in some cases taken while off-duty from inter-city buses, have been kept for extended periods. “PKK kidnaps three soldiers in south-eastern Turkey”, Today’s Zaman, 7 August 2012.

7“TAK issues warning to tourists going to Turkey”, Firat News Agency (pro-PKK), 17 June 2010; “Guerrillas attack in Kayseri marked ‘new phase’”, Firat News Agency, 28 May 2012.

8The above and following lists of attacks are not comprehensive and are based on an informal Crisis Group survey of Turk- ish official statements and media reports. On 20 September 2011, a car bomb claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK, a splinter group of the PKK), and condemned by the PKK/KCK executive, killed three people in central Ankara; the PKK apol- ogised for mistakenly killing four women in a car in Siirt on the same date. On 21 September 2011, a drive-by shooting at police cadets in Bitlis killed one and injured four. Five days later, fire on police killed a pregnant woman and a six-year-old. On 18 October, a roadside bomb attack on a police car killed four civilians in the car behind. On 29 October, a female suicide bomber killed herself and three others when she blew up a tea- house. On 23 November, a PKK group killed three oil field workers near Batman. On 11 December, a pro-PKK militant hijacked a ferry near Istanbul. On 20 May 2012 an apparent PKK group killed a village prayer leader in Ağrı. On 23 May in Muş, the PKK killed an off-duty non-commissioned officer.

9“PKK denied responsibility for attacks in the past”, Today’s Zaman, 21 August 2012. “Planning such an attack is not possi-

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The PKK also continues to attack isolated gendarmerie out- posts manned by young, ill-trained conscripts and execute off-duty soldiers on city streets. In one instance, it shot at a police football match as families watched, killing a policeman and a policeman’s wife. But this past summer violence has extended beyond the south east and lasted longer than in the past. On 9 August a bomb on a military vehicle in the western coastal town of Foça killed two soldiers. In the Şemdinli region of Hakkari province on the Iran-Iraq border between 23 July and 12 August, the PKK allegedly encircled a town and fought back with heavy weapons against the 2,000 soldiers sent to the area. The PKK said it was implementing a new tactic of hold- ing territory inside the country,¹⁰ and it led to one of the most sustained and bloody confrontations on Turkey’s territory since the conflict started in 1984.¹¹

The government has usually responded quickly to the at least 160 military clashes or security incidents that have caused casualties since June 2011.¹² The actual number of such events is believed to be far higher, but most are poorly reported in the press, especially in pro-government media.¹³ In August 2012 alone, the PKK/KCK listed 400

ble for our [PKK] movement [which is] focused on getting re- sult[s] from the struggle. Our movement has instructed all its units not to make any actions, particularly in civil settled areas and on feast days”. Statement from “KCK Presidency”, 24 Au- gust 2012.

10“The guerrillas’ basic tactic is hit-and-run, but now we have [a] tactical agenda of striking and digging in, taking control of territory. That’s why there’s heavy warfare going on in Kurdi- stan … that the Turkish state and media are trying to portray as a series of individual events”. Interview, Murat Karayılan, Firat News Agency, 3 August 2012.

11Turkish politicians claimed 115 PKK fighters were killed;

NTV television (private) said 2,000 troops were involved, backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes. “Turkey says 115 Kurd- ish rebels killed in offensive”, Associated Press, 5 August 2012.

Crisis Group has compiled PKK reports saying that 23 insurgents were killed in the offensive, and the PKK claimed that it killed “more than 100” soldiers. For PKK statements to 5 Au- gust, see http://bit.ly/QAkxHh.

12Informal, minimum tally maintained by Crisis Group June 2011-August 2012.

13On 9 May 2012, the day after eight PKK insurgents were killed in clashes, five of eleven major press outlets did not mention the news; most of the rest had between a sentence and a para- graph deep inside the paper. Other apparent PKK actions not widely reported are burnings of trucks stopped at flying insurgent checkpoints in the south east, arson of private cars and attacks on buses in western cities. “The fierce clashes taking place in this period are almost non-existent in the media. Even though residents in Diyarbakır can reach some conclusions through the noise of warplanes frequently taking off and landing, people in other parts of Turkey who are unaware of all this continue their lives as normal”. Cevdet Aşkın, Radikal, 23 May 2012. Similarly, after ten soldiers and twenty PKK were killed on 2 September, the three most pro-government newspapers limited the news on

incidents of shelling, air bombardment, clashes or other armed actions.¹⁴

Dozens of civilian deaths have resulted from Turkish armed action, too, which, though not intentional, are seen by many of Turkey’s Kurds as evidence of the state’s bad faith and impunity. The worst incident occurred in Decem- ber 2011, when the air force bombed and killed 34 Kurdish villagers near the town of Uludere as they were smuggling oil products over the Iraqi border on mules and horses.¹⁵ Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan voiced regret and offered compensation, but he was coy about a full apology, saying “if you notice, none of these smugglers ever steps on a [PKK] mine. Whose hands are the maps in?”¹⁶ The interior minister went further in suggesting that the smugglers – who were actually from villages aligned with the pro-government Village Guard militia – were in league with the PKK.¹⁷ According to mainstream commentator Sedat Ergin:

The incident has really traumatised our Kurdish-origin citizens, and strengthened their sense of victimhood ….

A major priority has to be the strengthening of the will of Turks and Kurds to live together. The government’s handling of this dossier … has turned the problem into gangrene”.¹⁸

Additionally, seven Iraqi Kurds were killed on 17 August 2011 in an apparent air force attack.¹⁹ Eleven days later, a tear gas projectile killed a Van town councillor during a demonstration in Hakkari province.

Since April 2009, waves of arrests have continued of several thousand activists from the main legal Kurdish movement party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP-Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi) (see Section IV.D below). These include elected deputies, mayors (some from major cities and districts), provincial councillors, party officials and or- dinary activists. Many have been accused of membership

their front pages to a couple of minor paragraphs. “Hıç yayın- lamasaydınız” [“Maybe it would have been better for you to publish nothing”], Taraf, 5 September 2012.

14“To the press and public: the balance of war for August 2012”, http://bit.ly/Q6exHT.

15Many were from a village called in Kurdish Roboski, by which name the “massacre” is sometimes known.

16Speech, cited in Milliyet, 29 May 2012.

17“Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin told NTV that ‘there’s nothing to say sorry about … heavy weapons have been carried in by mules in other cases … anyway those young people shouldn’t have been there’… in short, what Şahin is trying to say is the PKK + smuggling = Uludere”. Cevdet Aşkın, Radikal, op. cit.

18“Uludere faciası ve erdemli devlet olmak [The Uludere disas- ter and becoming a mature state]”, Hürriyet, 18 May 2012.

19“Turkish strike against Kurdish targets kill 7, local official says”, CNN, 21 August 2011.

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in a terrorist organisation, but not of committing any violent act. The basis for the charge is usually some statement that implied support for one or more of the goals of the Union of Kurdish Communities (Koma Civakên Kurdistan, KCK) umbrella organisation and specifically its Turkish Assembly offshoot (KCK/Türkiye Meclisi, KCK/TM).

On 26 November 2011, police swooped down on the offices or homes of lawyers in sixteen provinces who acted for the jailed PKK leader Öcalan. It detained 44, 36 of whom are now in jail pending trial on charges of having committed terrorist offences and passed messages from Öcalan to other PKK members.²⁰ Those arrested included most lawyers at the main Istanbul office defending Öca- lan and five other inmates on his prison island.²¹ After the government in effect barred weekly lawyer’s visits in July 2012, Öcalan refused to see his family members.

Thousands of these Kurdish movement activists remain in pre-trial detention, though the exact number is disputed.

International reaction has been muted, partly because Tur- key justifies this as part of an anti-terrorist effort (see Sec- tion IV.C below). AKP leaders make no apology, saying the PKK uses the KCK to try to create a parallel state, and the government’s duty is to preserve the state’s monopoly on justice and use of force.²²

All this adds up to dangerous backsliding, undermining one of the most productive attempts to end the 28-year- old armed conflict. The AKP has arguably done more than any previous government to address the grievances of Turkey’s long-suppressed ethnic Kurds, who number about 15-20 per cent of its 75 million people. This includes providing Kurdish-language state television, a fairer share

20Crisis Group interview, lawyer at Asrın Hukuk law office representing Öcalan, Istanbul, June 2012. “The indictment against us is about nothing ‘illegal’, it’s all about our ‘intention’, and that we provided a channel of communication to [the PKK insurgent leadership on the northern Iraqi mountain of] Qandil.

It’s actually an operation against the [peace] process, to show that everything about us is illegal, everything we do, even for the health of our clients … They wanted to put the blame of the failed Oslo Process on the lawyers. What they targeted was the negotiation process itself”. Ibid.

21“Our computers were copied and our papers seized, including, for instance, preparations for defence before the European Court of Human Rights … those put in jail [included] two driv- ers and a secretary “because you work in an illegal place, so it means they must trust you!” Ibid.

22“They conduct holdups, they kidnap, they judge, they shake down businessmen. There is an illegal organisation attempting to impose taxes and authority, to run trials and to establish a parallel state structure. I see the KCK operations not as something to impair the process, but rather a necessity of law and a natural extension of combating terrorism”. Interview, Yalçın Akdoğan, AKP deputy, adviser to Prime Minister Erdoğan, Star, 3 October 2011.

of investment in roads and infrastructure in the southeastern Kurdish-speaking provinces, greater freedom for the use of Kurdish in society and a sharp reduction of tor- ture in jails.²³

Also, the government began talks with the PKK after 2005 on ending the insurgency, some mediated by third parties in Europe and known as the Oslo Process.²⁴ In October 2009, the two agreed on an initial return of 34 PKK fighters and refugees through the Habur post on the Iraq border. But neither side prepared properly. The Kurdish movement seized on a joyful popular demonstration to proclaim a kind of victory, and the government immediate- ly responded angrily. The returnees were charged in court or fled back to Iraq, a planned return of diaspora exiles in Europe was cancelled, and the Democratic Opening began to unravel.²⁵

The talks continued for about a dozen rounds, however.

Leaked tapes and records demonstrate that the sides were able to converse in a good temper and with sincerity and that both recognised there could be no military solution.²⁶ Though discussions broke off abruptly in July 2011, the

23See Crisis Group Report, Turkey: Ending the PKK Insurgen- cy, op. cit., pp. 5-24.

24Deputy PKK leader Murat Karayılan said UK intelligence brought the sides together; some meetings were in Oslo; some leaked papers refer in Turkish to a “referee state” that would keep records; a tape of one session indicated support for the talks by a non-governmental mediation group.

25“Habur was not deliberate. We didn’t think, we were shocked too. It was spontaneous, people feeling, ‘the war has ended, our children are coming down from the mountains’”. Crisis Group interview, Remzi Kartal, exiled Kurdish movement leader, Brussels, June 2012. “The deal for Habur was terribly prema- ture, with anti-terrorism laws like we have on the books, there’s nothing you can do, of course [the eight PKK insurgents and 26 pro-PKK refugees who returned] were going to be arrested”.

Crisis Group interview, Ümit Fırat, Turkish Kurd intellectual, Istanbul, May 2012. “At Habur there was a feeling [of joy] that we’d leave the violence behind, that thousands [of guerrillas]

would come down. It was a general communal feeling. The PKK, BDP and the government all managed it badly”. Crisis Group interview, Şahismail Bedirhanoğlu, president, Southeastern Busi- nessmen’s and Industrialists’ Association (GÜNSİAD), Diyar- bakır, May 2012.

26“I would have posted the transcript of that [Oslo Process] discussion in 46-point capitals all over the streets of Diyarbakır.

What are we fighting for? The two sides basically agreed. This can be solved without arms”. Crisis Group interview, Zeynel Abidin Kızılyaprak, Turkish Kurd intellectual, Istanbul, April 2012. “We have always talked to the PKK, but our institutions always had to lie about it; now it’s out in the open”. Crisis Group interview, Turkish official, January 2012. “It was extremely serious, mutually respectful … we got very close to a settlement”.

Murat Karayılan, deputy PKK leader, interview with Avni Öz- gürel, Birlesikbasın.com, http://bit.ly/NIJdgs.

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need for new negotiations seems inevitable to some state officials.²⁷

The end of the talks came after June 2011 parliamentary elections in which AKP won 50 per cent of the vote. Some officials blame a PKK-army firefight in Silvan that left thirteen soldiers dead a month after the elections. The 14 July 2011 clash, in which seven PKK were also killed, has been the subject of heated controversy from the start. Both sides say it proved the other’s bad faith. PKK leaders say an army patrol ran into a PKK group, forcing the PKK to defend itself, and that most soldiers died in a brushfire that resulted. The Turkish side says the PKK’s move to

“active defence” in February 2011 had already nullified any ceasefire, and the attack was premeditated. Salt was rubbed in the Turkish wounds when, a few hours later, a Kurdish movement gathering in nearby Diyarbakır ignored the casualties and announced the goal of “democratic autonomy”.²⁸

The Kurdish movement, however, says that if Erdoğan sincerely aimed for peace, he would not have let the clash trip up his work for peace. Others say it was the PKK’s demand to become a self-defence force in the south east after an agreement that broke the possible deal.²⁹ The Kurd- ish movement says that Öcalan had proposed the mutual signing of a document – the “three protocols” – which the government negotiating team found reasonable but was brushed aside by Prime Minister Erdoğan.³⁰Another view

27“Eventually there will have to be negotiations with the PKK

…. There is no harmony of views on what to do between state institutions in Ankara”. Crisis Group interview, Turkish official, Ankara, November 2011. “For sure, the PKK has to be de- demonised”. Crisis Group interview, Turkish official, Istanbul, April 2012.

28See, for instance, Yalçın Akdoğan, “Terör, süreci nasıl etkiler?

[How will terror affect the process?]”, Star, 22 June 2012. For more of the context, see Crisis Group Report, Turkey: Ending the PKK Insurgency, op. cit., p. 3. “Please believe me, it was not intentional”. Murat Karayılan, deputy PKK leader, interview, op. cit.

29Crisis Group interview, Mazhar Bağlı, AKP Central Execu- tive Committee, Istanbul, May 2012.

30The Kurdish movement says Öcalan laid out his demand for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; a committee to write a democratic constitution; and concrete procedures for PKK with- drawal and subsequent disarmament. “The state delegation as- sured Öcalan that Prime Minister Erdoğan agreed with ‘95 per cent of the road map’ …. The delegation promised that the government would respond – positively, it was understood [after the June 2011 elections]. But no written or verbal response ever arrived at İmralı. The delegation was never seen again. In July 2011, Öcalan stated that under these conditions he had to with- draw from the talks”. Editorial note, International Initiative

‘Freedom for Öcalan-Peace in Kurdistan’; Abdullah Öcalan, Prison Writings III: The Road Map to Negotiations (Cologne, 2012). “In 2010, the Movement really helped the AKP in the

is that Erdoğan baulked at the whole idea of communal rights for Kurds.³¹An exiled Kurdish movement leader said:

They pushed [Öcalan] on some concepts, thinking, “we can convince Öcalan, we can do this and that with the movement”. They couldn’t convince him. This is the cause of the new fighting. It makes the people and the movement very angry …. There was no reply [to Öca- lan’s offer], as if he had not said anything. They are pursuing a military solution, to break our will, even though they know it won’t work.³²

Not all hopes of compromise are lost, however. The BDP was also successful in the elections, backing independent candidates who won 36 seats in parliament. After boy- cotting the Grand Assembly for more than three months to protest the way one deputy had his seat taken away due to a last-minute conviction for “terrorist propaganda”, and that five others were not allowed out of pre-trial detention, the deputies took their oaths and parliamentary seats on 1 October 2011.

Parliament should be where real negotiations on reforms to extend Kurds’ rights occur. Prime Minister Erdoğan says he supports a parliamentary process.³³ The best initial fo- rum is an all-party parliamentary committee set up in Oc- tober 2011 to prepare the first draft of a new constitution.

2010 referendum with a ceasefire from August .… Two days before the election, Erdoğan went on TV, said ‘there’s no Kurdish problem, only PKK terror, I would have hanged Öcalan’. Peo- ple thought Erdoğan was being political, but those on the inside knew it was his answer …. the leader [Öcalan] kept saying, the [state negotiating] delegation is serious, but the AKP hasn’t got a policy for a solution. Erdoğan just wants to win time”. Crisis Group interview, Remzi Kartal, exiled Kurdish movement leader, Brussels, June 2012. “The protocols were very short, simple and clear. I got a copy written by the leader’s own hand. They [the government] got it to me. We accepted it; we just suggested some simple sentences to change … then suddenly the prime minister’s attitude changed … AKP wanted to stay in power more than to solve the Kurdish problem”. Murat Karayılan, interview, op. cit.

31“Öcalan told his brother [in October 2011] that Turkey wants to impose a settlement with individual rights, not communal rights … Öcalan said he wouldn’t carry on giving life to this process of playing for time”. Crisis Group interview, Öcalan lawyer, Istanbul, June 2012. In the Oslo Process, “the state wanted a deal [to solve the PKK problem], but it was half in, half out, a deal on the cheap and easy. And the Kurds took it as a sign that there was no good intention from the state”. Crisis Group interview, Aliza Marcus, expert on the PKK, Istanbul, May 2012.

32Crisis Group interview, Remzi Kartal, Brussels, June 2012.

33“We will negotiate with their [parliamentary] representatives, but nobody should expect anything like this with the representatives of the [armed] terror organisation”. Speech at opening of Iğdır airport, Taraf, 14 July 2012.

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Few think this will be easy, with all four elected parties pencilling in red lines that have delayed compromise on sensitive matters relating to the Kurdish question.³⁴ But no party dares to leave the table, because the process au- tomatically ends if one does.³⁵

In May 2012, the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyetçi Halk Partisi, CHP) suggested an eight-person all-party parliamentary committee to discuss the Kurdish issue, to be joined by a “wise men’s”

committee of twelve. This was a turnabout for CHP, which, under its pre-2010 leadership, had refused even to discuss the Democratic Opening with AKP.³⁶ On 6 June, the AKP and CHP leaders discussed the idea, which was welcomed by the Kurdish movement’s BDP, and the two sides agreed that the small but influential nationalist opposition MHP would have to take part. That party, however, refused to meet on the “so-called Kurdish problem”.³⁷ With MHP accusing the CHP of becoming the “mouthpiece of Öcalan”, AKP suggested that it could continue more in- formally with only CHP.³⁸

Other progress is evident. The government is uncovering extra-judicial killings of Kurdish movement activists from the 1990s, even if convictions come slowly. In May 2012, for example, seventeen soldiers were arrested and charged in connection with the killing of two PKK insurgents and

34“Most folks we talk to are not very positive. This consensus process [is hard], people tend to be pessimistic. Someone will get pushed out. If it is the Kurds [of BDP], it doesn’t solve the problem”. Crisis Group interview, Western diplomat, Ankara, July 2012.

35“We are being constructive … and we are in a prisoner’s dilem- ma [unable to get out]”. Crisis Group interview, Oktay Vural, MHP parliamentary group deputy chairman, Ankara, July 2012.

“All of them are afraid of what happens if they stop … there is a real commitment to the process … the brackets [in the text]

are strange for Turkey but a first for the country … it’s a very serious process, and they are prisoners of that process”. Crisis Group interview, European diplomat, Ankara, July 2012.

36“Our party is trying to do something. Our aim was to be able to go [to Kurdish areas] where we couldn’t go at all. We are now organised all over Turkey. We changed our position. We were the first to back optional Kurdish lessons. We are trying to change people’s reflexes. [Kurds] were interested, but wonder- ing if it would work in the long term; they asked, ‘will CHP still say this after the elections’. It will take a long time; it will be difficult”. Crisis Group interview, Sezgin Tanrıkulu, vice- president, CHP, and former president of the Diyarbakır bar, Ankara, May 2012.

37“It’s a coalition of the willing and we won’t be part of it. It’ll be a commission of parties, not the assembly”. Crisis Group interview, Oktay Vural, MHP parliamentary group deputy chairman, Ankara, July 2012.

38See “AK Party-CHP meeting on Kurdish issue ‘positive’, MHP backing sought”, Today’s Zaman, 6 June 2012.

a civilian in 2009.³⁹ But the overall government strategy and who is responsible for devising and implementing it are unclear.⁴⁰ Many Ankara commentators and diplomats think that Erdoğan’s priority is to be elected president in 2014, so he seeks to maximise his share of the Turkish nationalist swing vote by avoiding potentially unpopular steps to solve the Kurdish problem.⁴¹

But AKP is willing to take some risks. In June 2012, Depu- ty Prime Minister Arınç said moving Öcalan to house arrest could be discussed once the PKK disarmed and peace was established. He also supported the idea of amendments to laws that now equate propaganda with terrorism.⁴² In July 2012, a new set of rules made it more difficult to de- tain suspects, although few Kurdish movement activists were initially released.⁴³

39“Turkish officers accused of executing PKK militants, civilian”, Hürriyet Daily News, 23 May 2012. In 2009, gendarmerie Colonel Cemal Temizöz was put on trial for twenty killings or disappearances between 1993 and 1995; that trial is ongoing.

These alleged “killings were just a tiny fraction of thousands of unresolved killings and enforced disappearances …. Temizöz is the most senior member of the Turkish military ever to stand trial specifically for gross violations of human rights … [but]

the trial, which started in September 2009, offers an opportunity to examine the [many] obstacles to securing accountability in Turkey’s domestic courts”. Emma Sinclair-Webb, “Time For Justice: Ending Impunity for Killings and Disappearances in 1990s Turkey”, Human Rights Watch, September 2012. In 2012, a tip-off to a newspaper led to the arrest and charging of the long-suspected killer of famed Kurdish movement intellectual Musa Anter in 1992. Investigations in that case are continuing.

40In May 2012, the government removed Murat Özçelik as head of the main organ in charge of coordinating strategy, the Un- dersecretariat for Security and Public Order, the third change of chief in two years. A Western diplomat said the Kurdish movement politicians read the newspaper columns of AKP deputy and Erdoğan adviser Yalçın Akdoğan to gauge official policy and that the other two policymakers are also long-term advis- ers, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay and National Intelli- gence Organisation head Hakan Fidan. Crisis Group interview, Ankara, July 2012.

41“He’s going for 51 per cent, that needs polarisation with CHP and much more nationalistic speeches”. Crisis Group interview, Oktay Vural, MHP parliamentary group deputy chairman, An- kara, July 2012. “He doesn’t want to solve the Kurdish issue right now”. Crisis Group interview, European diplomat, Ankara, July 2012.

42“Silah bırakıp, eylem yapmazlarsa Öcalan’a ev hapsi konu- şulabilir [If they lay down their weapons and take no action, house arrest for Öcalan can be talked about]”, AHaber, 16 June 2012.

43For instance, in the Şırnak KCK case, an application to re- lease all 36 of the 90 persons charged who were being held in pre-trial detention resulted in only five being released. “Court releases five suspects in KCK probe”, Today’s Zaman, 20 July

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Signalling a corresponding wish for a new start, Leyla Zana, a Kurdish movement leader, tacked away from the BDP’s and PKK’s anti-AKP rhetoric. After saying that Erdoğan was someone who could solve the Kurdish problem, she met him on 30 June 2012 to ask for a revival of talks with the PKK, a proper apology for the killing of the 34 Kurdish smugglers and to consider house arrest for Öca- lan.⁴⁴ Although she was indirectly criticised for this by BDP leaders and PKK hardliners,⁴⁵ she was backed by a cross-party group of Kurdish opinion-makers.⁴⁶ The government has also maintained a minimalist, indirect channel of communication with the PKK through Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani (see Section III.B.2 below). As AKP deputy Galip Ensarioğlu put it, “the government hasn’t completely given up on the process … it’s not over”.⁴⁷ But violence remains attractive to some. While a broad group of Turkish and Kurdish opinion-makers signed a petition asking that the PKK declare a ceasefire for the holy month of Ramadan, the insurgency brushed it aside and launched a new string of attacks (see above). A chunk of Turkish public opinion is angry and demanding a more robust government response. A top trending expression on Twitter in Turkish on 5-6 August was “açılım değil katliam istiyoruz [we don’t want an opening; we want a massacre]”.

This report focuses on the PKK and its side organisations, building on Crisis Group’s September 2011 report on ending the insurgency. A subsequent report will examine the relevance of the Kurdish movement’s demands from the perspective of Turkey’s main Kurdish-speaking city of Diyarbakır. Another will profile Turkish nationalists’ views of the conflict. All these reports constitute an attempt to bridge the gap in perceptions, information and trust that exists between the Kurdish movement, which feels unjustly

2012. See also Murat Yetkin, “Not a very bright start for reform”, Hürriyet Daily News, 13 July 2012.

44Leyla Zana also suggested that the interviewers’ newspaper could make a contribution to inter-ethnic harmony by taking what Kurds see as a discriminatory motto off its masthead: “Turkey for the Turks”. “İnanıyorum bu işi Erdoğan çözer [I believe that Erdoğan can solve this business]”, Hürriyet, 14 June 2012. See also “‘Oslo talks should be revived’, says Zana”, Hürriyet Dai- ly News, 1 July 2012.

45“To pin hopes on AKP is to be naïve”. Selahettin Demirtaş, statement, “Demirtaş’tan Leyla Zana’ya eleştiri! [Criticism of Leyla Zana from Demirtaş]”, Vatan, 14 June 2012. “AKP is pursuing a policy [harsher even] than that of state institutions

… Erdoğan can’t solve this”. Interview, Aysel Tuğluk, BDP deputy, Aydınlık, 16 July 2012. “Leyla Zana’s statements came to the agenda [as AKP tries to] neutralise the PKK”. Interview, Duran Kalkan, PKK leader, Firat News Agency, 1 July 2012.

46“Kapı aralandı, adım atma zamanı [The door has opened, time to take steps], Taraf, 2 July 2012.

47Interview with Taraf, 13 July 2012.

targeted by the Turkish state, and mainstream Turkish opinion, which is understandably angered by PKK violence, in order to help define a comprehensive yet realistic state policy for resolving the conflict.

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II. MEANS OR END? THE PKK’S ARMED STRUGGLE

The PKK was founded in a remote village teashop by then university graduate Abdullah Öcalan and a few co-con- spirators in 1978. Its declared goal was to liberate by armed struggle an independent, united Kurdistan for all the 25- 30 million Kurds of the Middle East. Having failed to create an independent state, it now says it has abandoned that goal. It remains, however, a large, well-financed, highly organised and battle-hardened entity, with several thousand men and women under arms, millions of Kurdish sympathisers in Turkey, long-established bases, including a main one in Iraq, apparently jointly-run parties in Iran, Iraq and Syria and deep-rooted support networks in Eu- rope. As a PKK leader put it, “the PKK started its struggle at the point where the question was ‘is there a Kurdish people or not?’ Now what’s being discussed is how the Kurdish problem should be solved”.⁴⁸

Turkey captured the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999; cut most of its links to Syria, Iran, Greece and other countries that in the 1980s and 1990s gave it support or safe haven; won designation of it as a terrorist organisation over the past decade by the U.S., the EU and most European countries, as well as listing by Washington of several leaders as significant drugs traffickers; and, since 2007, added to its vast superiority in men and equipment a live feed of U.S. intelligence on the PKK mountain bases along the Iraqi border.

Yet, the state has been unable to crush the organisation.

Even if it may have been militarily more powerful in the 1990s,⁴⁹ the AKP failure to implement the Democratic Opening may have actually strengthened the PKK’s grip on the Kurdish movement’s imagination.⁵⁰ As a long-time outside analyst of the PKK put it, “the recognition of PKK authority is much more widespread than I have ever

48Crisis Group written interview, Sabri Ok, PKK/KCK leader, 24 November 2011.

49“They ran Kurdistan in 1991-1994. A bird couldn’t fly without their permission. They had courts, for real. What they have now is just a kind of manipulation, perhaps they are truly dominant in just one or two places”. Crisis Group interview, Zeynel Abidin Kızılyaprak, Turkish Kurd intellectual, Istanbul, April 2012.

50“They seem as strong as ever, there is a feeling that other avenues have been closed. After the Opening failed, there was a sense of, ‘well of course’ …. What’s so upsetting is that the Turkish state has such an insistence that the PKK controls every single Kurd in the country, which is also what the PKK wants to have people believe, even though it isn’t true. This is a very unproductive perception of the conflict, but everyone believes it”. Crisis Group interview, U.S. researcher on Kurdish language and politics, Istanbul, May 2012.

seen … it has a better base than before … People see the PKK as the main group representing the Kurds. Even if they don’t like the PKK, they recognise that it in effect exerts authority over the region and Kurdish politics”.⁵¹ Another believes the recent offensives are its attempt to prove that it is the necessary party to any settlement.⁵² Sabri Ok, a member of the KCK Executive Committee, put it this way:

Our [the Kurdish movement’s] military goal is not to beat the Turkish army or state. We are not dreamers.

Our military goal is to show the Turkish state and military that they can’t play with the Kurdish people’s will and honour any more as they have in the past, that [the Kurdish people] is not defenceless against the policy of denial and rejection and war, and that it has a natural right to self defence …. The PKK has announced several unilateral ceasefires, lasting for about five years of AKP’s nine years in power. AKP has used this opportunity to strengthen itself. But it didn’t use this strength for a solution, but to try to break the will of the Kurdish people and to destroy our movement.⁵³ A. THE ORGANISATION

The Kurdish movement in Turkey has spawned a bewil- dering alphabet soup of entities.⁵⁴ The most prominent is now technically the KCK, which emerged from PKK-led congresses in northern Iraq in 2005-2007. It views itself as a “system”, not an “organisation”,⁵⁵ and its constitution- like charter talks about “KCK citizens … anyone who is

51Crisis Group interview, Aliza Marcus, expert on the PKK, Istanbul, May 2012.

52“The PKK knows that they can’t win militarily but hopes at- trition will force Turkey back to the negotiating table. They’ve adapted their tactics, using much more varied means, and the Turkish side is struggling to keep up”. Crisis Group telephone interview, Gareth Jenkins, expert on Turkish security matters, August 2012.

53Crisis Group written interview, 24 November 2011.

54Turkey’s Kurdish movement’s legal parties, for instance, have been successively known by their acronyms HEP, DEP, HADEP, DEHAP, DTP and BDP. The PKK has called itself ERNK, KADEK, Kongra Gel and KKK; currently it prefers KCK and perhaps HDP too. Its military wing, now HPG, was previously ARGK. The movement has changed names after the frequent closure of its newspapers, TV stations, parties or associations to avoid members being listed and jailed as terrorists, to rebrand itself after an ideological shift, or to mark the occa- sional new alliance with left-wing factions. “Despite all the changes of name, which were always proclaimed as new begin- nings and promised democratic structures, there were no significant changes in organisation and personnel”. Protection of the Constitution Report 2010, German interior ministry, Berlin, 2011.

55The charter, proclaimed in March 2005, is in Turkish at http://

bit.ly/Qf6eI3.

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born in Kurdistan, lives there or is bound to the KCK”.

The armed insurgents, known as “People’s Defence Forc- es”, are an integral part of the KCK.⁵⁶

The name PKK has, however, endured, used by both sympathisers and opponents to refer to Öcalan’s dominant, core cadres.⁵⁷ “After the PKK’s shift to KCK, we are now witnessing the emergence of a new name, HDP [Halkların Demokratik Kongresi, Congress of Democratic Peoples]”, said a European counter-terrorism officer, “but under- neath, we always find exactly the same organisation, the same associations”.⁵⁸ Indeed, the most common appella- tion for the group cuts through the PKK’s self-woven tangle of names and entities: the Turkish word örgüt (“the organisation”).

The KCK, therefore, overlaps broadly with the PKK, with the latter’s leaders sometimes using the terms interchange- ably.⁵⁹ It is both more than simply the PKK’s urban, civilian wing, but less than an umbrella body that integrates the whole Kurdish movement.⁶⁰ The leadership’s strategies may in fact include keeping distinctions murky between the KCK, the KCK’s various subsidiary armed, “judicial”, and “legislative” groups, the PKK and legal groups like the BDP and Europe-based associations. Outsiders are left guessing whether the entities are distinct. Perhaps reality was best reflected in Brussels, where the BDP and

56According to the KCK charter, Article 14/4, “The People’s Defence Forces are autonomous within the KCK system … responsible for protecting the basic rights and freedoms of the Kurdistan people, to protect the KCK Leader’s life and freedom

… within the parameters of legitimate defence”. Article 43 adds that the executive committee appoints members of the autonomous People’s Defence Forces command and charges the command with working according to the political will of the

“Democratic Society of Confederalism Leader”, Öcalan and the political will of the KCK’s Kongra Gel legislature.

57Sympathisers use the Kurdish pronunciation Pe-Ke-Ke; most others in Turkey use the Turkish version, Pe-Ka-Ka.

58Crisis Group interview, Brussels, June 2012.

59For instance, Article 36 of the KCK charter states: “The PKK is not a classical political party …. It is the ideological force of the KCK system …. Every PKK cadre within the KCK system is bound to the PKK formation in ideological, moral, philo- sophical, organisational and everyday life points of reference”.

60“Not everyone in KCK is PKK. The PKK is more narrow.

But they are so overlapping. They have to find jobs for all their people, it’s a growing movement!”, Crisis Group interview, Sezgin Tanrıkulu, CHP deputy chairman, Ankara, July 2012.

“The KCK is an umbrella political structure, a transnational entity. But the U.S., for instance, hasn’t moved to designate it [as a terrorist group]. It’s a problematic organisation, and it’s a gray zone on ground level. I suspect that some [KCK people]

can be very far removed [from the PKK]. In a political cause, the people themselves may be non-violent, but if you trace up the lines [you find the armed group]”. Crisis Group interview, Western diplomat, Ankara, July 2012.

the pro-PKK Roj television offices had different addresses on different streets – but joined up at the back through their gardens.⁶¹

Under Öcalan’s overarching leadership, the KCK is headed by his number two, Murat Karayılan, a Kurd from Tur- key. He leads the KCK Executive Committee, in whose name major policy statements are made from his base in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq. The KCK includes a legislature (the Kongra Gel, People’s Congress), headed by Remzi Kartal, another Kurd from Turkey, who is a political refugee in Belgium);⁶² an executive, including the

“People’s Defence Forces” (Hêzên Parastina Gel, HPG), which is run from the Qandils by Bahoz Erdal (a Syrian Kurd, born as Fahman Hussain); and a judiciary, headed by Sait Avdi, an Iranian Kurd.⁶³

The top men in the PKK’s current executive committee are also the three top names in the KCK’s twelve-person executive committee: Öcalan, Karayılan and PKK co- founder and former insurgent forces chief Cemil Bayık.

The KCK may also offer former PKK militants, most of them released from jail, a network through which they have the chance to become politically active in Turkey.⁶⁴ If KCK institutions seem secretive, the chief of its legislature says, it is because “we’re a revolutionary movement, and there’s a war going on, so we don’t have public meeting times”.⁶⁵

61“After raiding these offices in March 2010, security services became convinced that this is all one organisation”. Crisis Group interview, European diplomat, Ankara, July 2012.

62Kongra Gel has a membership of 300 leading personalities chosen in elections every two years from Kurdish communities, associations and business groups in the four main countries where Kurds are native and the diaspora. Crisis Group interview, Remzi Kartal, exiled Kurdish movement leader, Brussels, June 2012.

63For a detailed overview from a Turkish perspective, see Atilla Sandıklı, “KCK Terör Örgütünün Yapısı ve Faaliyetleri [The KCK Terror Organisation’s Structure and Activities]”, Wise Men Centre for Strategic Studies (BILGESAM), 15 December 2012, http://bit.ly/Ns4UiM.

64“Theoretically they are civilians, not directly involved in armed struggle. They are not necessarily sent from the mountain. There were hundreds, thousands of PKK released from jail after Öcalan’s capture in 1999. They wanted to stay involved, but bringing them to the mountains wasn’t practical, and anyway, the rebel war was suspended at that time. Öcalan and the Qandil leadership came up with the idea of having these people go to the cities and get involved in legal activities. This way, the PKK kept these supporters engaged and had a new way to maintain influence over non-violent Kurdish activism”. Crisis Group interview, Aliza Marcus, expert on the PKK, Istanbul, May 2012.

65Crisis Group interview, Remzi Kartal, exiled Kurdish movement leader, Brussels, June 2012.

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One other significant group – in theory autonomous – is the Brussels-based KNK (Kurdistan National Congress), a lobbying group of exiles, the PKK and pro-PKK parties in all Kurdish-populated regions of the Middle East.

Headed by Tahir Kemalizadeh, an Iranian Kurd, it aims to unite Kurds and focus international attention on human rights violations against them. Its ambition is for the Kurd- ish movement to become the equivalent of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), which moved from terrorism to government.⁶⁶ The KNK tries to balance its membership: 60 per cent independent figures, 40 per cent political parties; and roughly 30 per cent Turkish Kurds, 25 per cent Iraqi Kurds, 20 per cent Iranian Kurds, 15 per cent Syrian Kurds and 10 per cent diaspora Kurds.⁶⁷ Nev- ertheless, the rhetoric of the supposedly separate KNK is hard to distinguish from that of PKK/KCK groups.⁶⁸ B. THE LEADERSHIP

Öcalan built the PKK into a resilient group through armed insurgency, ideological fervour, terrorist attacks on civilians and liquidation of its internal dissidents.⁶⁹ In the organisation’s literature, and even when Öcalan writes about himself, his name often metamorphoses into the word

66An ANC activist, Judge Essa Moosa, attending a Kurdish movement meeting in the European Parliament in December 2011, spoke of comparisons between the causes, noting that a South African solution became possible when the former government unilaterally unbanned the ANC, and called on the Turkish government to “cross the Rubicon”. “The KNK is like the ANC in the past; the ANC attends our congresses, and a KNK delegation from KNK went to South Africa with BDP”.

Crisis Group interview, pro-PKK Kurdish exile from Turkey, London, June 2012.

67Crisis Group interview, pro-PKK activist, Brussels, Decem- ber 2011.

68KNK President Tahir Kemalizadeh told pro-PKK Roj TV that

“Kurdistan is one country, and the people of Kurdistan are one nation and they must reunite … if in north [Turkish] Kurdistan there is progress and it can achieve its freedom, this freedom will be extended to all parts of Kurdistan. But if the Kurds are defeated there, then it is like separating the head from the body, and the Kurds will be defeated and paralysed in the other parts”. “Kurdish National Congress chairman interviewed on pan-Kurdish strategy”, BBC Monitoring International Reports, 14 June 2010.

69A reporter who interviewed Öcalan in the early 1990s said he was paranoid and reminded him of Stalin, “[a man who] made clear that months and months of indoctrination were far more important than learning basic guerrilla-warfare tactics … [saying] we can afford to lose 70 per cent of PKK recruits on the battlefield within a year …. This son of a despised and failed peasant father shared the single-minded, blinkered devotion to violence I’d learned to identify over the years as a Middle East- ern cancer”. Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My encounters with Kurdistan (Boulder, 1998), p. 238.

“Leadership”. He remains the object of extraordinary devotion to his followers, despite a lingering culture of fear.⁷⁰ In June 2012, one burned himself to death on a hilltop looking out towards his prison island of İmralı, and at least six others have killed themselves in similar fashion demanding his freedom. One of the only messages he has sent from prison in the past year is to his supporters not to kill themselves or conduct hunger strikes to win his freedom.⁷¹ Öcalan certainly views the negotiations with the government as an opportunity to end his imprisonment.⁷² Still, thirteen years of jail and the 1,300 books that have been delivered to the small cell where he is alone 23 hours a day appear to have softened his approach.⁷³ His dense phil- osophical style survives in recent writings – a typical chapter discusses “Ideological identity and time-space conditions of the new development in civilisation” – but a European supporter says:

His language reflects strongly the rich historic and cultural heritage of the Kurds and the power of their language …. It was quite amazing to hear him [in the early 1990s] speaking often two-three hours straight and with thousands of Kurds listening to him. Öcalan and the Kurdish movement have turned against the narrow- minded concept of nationalism and the nation state and

70“I worked alongside him for one year. Öcalan woke us up, united the Kurds …. The PKK is not an organisation. It became a people”. Crisis Group interview, former PKK insurgent, Brussels, June 2012. “Whether you agree with him or not, he has a huge influence over Kurds from Turkey. If he called people to Trafalgar Square, not one would stay at home”. Crisis Group interview, former leader of the UK’s Turkish-origin Kurdish community, London, June 2012. “Internal political opposition is almost non-existent. There’s a feeling that ‘He’ is watching …. If you are criticised by the PKK, that means your life is under threat. People keep quiet … before the PKK starts talking about democracy, democratic autonomy, etc., they should apply it to themselves”. Crisis Group interview, Ümit Fırat, Turkish Kurd intellectual, Istanbul, May 2012.

71Another seven tried to burn themselves to death and survived.

Crisis Group interview, Öcalan lawyer, June 2012.

72“My own position is of strategic importance. [A settlement]

has a limited chance of implementation without Öcalan … it is necessary that I be released on the basis of a defence presented by me to [my proposed] Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I must be enabled to [communicate with and] prepare all circles linked to the Kurds, especially the PKK, for the democratic solution …. There should be support to meet various needs, including and especially that of [my future place of residence]”.

Öcalan, Prison Writings III, op. cit., p. 104.

73According to Cevat Oneş, former deputy undersecretary of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation, “he reads nonstop, mostly philosophy but also other subjects. He has developed an almost utopian outlook”. Cited in Marc Champion and Ayla Albayrak, “Jailed Kurd Leader at Conflict’s Core”, Wall Street Journal, 20 October 2011.

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are looking for … a democratic Middle East in which the Kurds are able to freely articulate their own cultural and political identity …. Debates in the national and international media are largely dominated by PKK

“terrorism” and not by what Öcalan and the Kurdish movement may be able to contribute to a just political and constructive solution to the long-standing, unresolved Kurdish question.⁷⁴

Öcalan was a key player in the 2005-2011 Oslo Process, and his supporters claim he is still the man who can make a peace deal work.⁷⁵ If he should die in prison, it would likely be much harder to make any future deal stick.⁷⁶ Dur- ing the talks, he canvassed the various constituencies: the diaspora, PKK fighters and jailed PKK members in Tur- key.⁷⁷ He authorised the last draft deal in May 2011, known as the “three protocols”. He appears to have the loyalty of Karayılan, the KCK president.⁷⁸ The legal BDP’s leader, Selahettin Demirtaş, believes that Öcalan should be the negotiator with the state and allowed full communication with the PKK, in other words to reestab- lish his authority over the organisation.⁷⁹

But Öcalan’s grip on his group appears to be slipping. On at least three recent occasions, hard-to-explain PKK violence and mutual misjudgements have tripped up the gov-

74Crisis Group interview, Estella Schmid, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign activist, London, April 2012.

75“Öcalan is the last chance for Turkey. He has power over the movement and people. He can persuade them”. Crisis Group interview, Remzi Kartal, exiled Kurdish movement leader, Brus- sels, June 2012.

76“If Öcalan dies in jail, people are going to say it was deliberate, and it will lead to an explosion in the south east, also in the [Kurdish communities] in the west. It’s a danger, it will be a very violent time”. Crisis Group interview, Aliza Marcus, expert on the PKK, Istanbul, May 2012.

77PKK leader Murat Karayılan says 6,000 PKK members are serving sentences in Turkish jails. Letter to Taraf, 10 October 2011.

78“There is one PKK, but two important voices, Öcalan and Karayılan. While Öcalan is in jail, Karayılan calls the shots”.

Crisis Group interview, Aliza Marcus, expert on the PKK, Is- tanbul, May 2012.

79“If the isolation in İmralı [prison island] is lifted, and the negotiations and dialogue begin again, the PKK can end its armed actions …. There has to be healthy communication between the PKK and Öcalan, not through lawyers … this can’t work on İmralı”. “Oslo süreci yeniden başlasın [Let the Oslo Process begin again]”, interview with Taraf, 25 June 2012. “Öcalan is not a normal person; he is the most important person in Turkey’s no. 1 problem. Öcalan wants to play a role. It can’t be done one hour a week through lawyers. He wants health, safety and space to move freely. As he says himself, ‘it’s like they want me to swim in an empty pool’. Continuation of his isolation will only make matters worse, cause more clashes”. Crisis Group interview, Öcalan lawyer, Istanbul, June 2012.

ernment’s and Öcalan’s apparent moves towards a settlement.⁸⁰ Even Kurdish movement figures question whether Öcalan can convince the PKK fighting machine to lay down its arms.⁸¹ A major movement commentator believes hardliners have seized full control of the PKK.⁸² According to a European counter-terrorism official, “Öcalan is instru- mentalised. In the PKK these days there’s not much inter- est in Öcalan beyond the symbol he represents”.⁸³ Turkey suspects outside powers control parts of the organisation’s international network.⁸⁴ The leading AKP deputy from Diyarbakır, Galip Ensarioğlu, says the PKK hardliners deliberately undermined hopes of a settlement with the past year of attacks:

[The PKK leaders all said] the chief negotiator must be Öcalan. But it was them that sabotaged it. Öcalan is now angry with his own organisation. They ruined things for a government that took a political risk to start the process …. The government doesn’t trust [the PKK]

any more …. I call on the organisation: who is your representative? [Öcalan in] İmralı, the BDP or [the insurgents in] Qandil? You must decide.⁸⁵

80The three cases most commentators point to are the bungled attempted amnesty at Habur in 2009, an unexpected upsurge in PKK attacks – and Turkish army operations – in early 2011 including the Silvan incident that killed thirteen soldiers, and a major PKK attack on the Daglica border post in June 2012. “A power inside the PKK itself delegitimises PKK leaders when they start speaking about peace, destroys their credibility and pushes them outside the negotiations”. Ahmet Altan, “Barış der demez [As soon as one says peace]”, Taraf, 20 June 2012.

81“The PKK will never change, and Öcalan will say anything to suit his circumstances. The PKK’s goal is not to do something for the Kurds but to get power for themselves. The PKK will never come down from the mountains completely”. Crisis Group interview, Ümit Fırat, Turkish Kurd intellectual, Istanbul, May 2012.

82“If anyone can create an earthquake in the Kurdish movement, that is Öcalan. But he is also silent, because he worries that what he has to say [about peace] might not win a response from the PKK …. The PKK [hardliners’] strategy is to keep Öcalan eternally in İmralı, and it is not possible that Öcalan doesn’t understand this. They [the real PKK] make it look like they really want him moved to house arrest; but none of them want him [back in charge]”. Orhan Miroğlu, “PKK gerçeği ve Öcalan [Öcalan and the PKK reality]”, Taraf, 25 June 2012.

83Crisis Group interview, Brussels, June 2012.

84“Öcalan has been turned into a mythological figure and has influential power. It is not easy for anyone to grab his role … but if the [PKK] actors lack good will, sincerity and vision, and if they are incapable, have different intentions or are controlled by others, then your task will be difficult .… Rather than focusing on the results and expecting their benefits, they seek power by exploiting the process”. Interview, Yalçın Akdoğan, Star, op. cit.

85Interview with Taraf, 13 July 2012.